House

Water clanks from the tap
like a chain -- a lifetime

since anything has moved here
but rats and birds. I see

the last inhabitants as a father
and son, the father

sending the son off to the city
with a handshake and a pocket

of old pound notes.
He might as well be sending him

to bring home time
without a watch to carry it.

When you are moving into a new house
be slow to write the address in your address books,
because the ghosts who are named there
are constantly seeking new homes,
like fresher students in rain-steamed phone booths.

So by the time you arrive with your books
and frying pan, these ghosts are already
familiar with that easy chair, have found
slow, slow creaks in the floorboards,
are camped on the dream shores of that virgin bed.

I'm Martin Drennan from Ballydavis,
tipping back glasses of Guinness
and whiskey in Dinny Joe's,

remembering the balls in the town
hall when I'd slip in unnoticed
to watch and drool

Woodbine ash from the balcony.
And out in the Market Square,
fresh with the smell of pigs,

before the Wright brothers
changed the dreams of men --
long before spluttering aeroplanes --

those arms of empty haycarts
looked like anti-aircraft guns
aligned, jutting into sky,

and the spit-and-polish farmers,
always gaunt in monochrome,
scrutinised the camera

that captured for posterity
their endangered species --
the Irish between wars.